Olive ridley sea turtle
Lepidochelys olivacea
— Where the name comes from
Lepidochelys is “scaly turtle”, from lepís, the scale; olivacea gives the olive-green colour of the carapace. It is the smallest and the most numerous of the sea turtles, and the one that invented the group’s most spectacular strategy: turning up all at once.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Turtles and tortoises
- Habitat
- Open tropical sea; sandy beaches for nesting
- Range
- The tropical Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans
- Size
- 60–70 cm of carapace, 35–50 kg
- Diet
- Jellyfish, crabs, molluscs, algae
- Lifespan
- 50 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the most abundant sea turtle in the world.
- 02
It swims as much as a thousand kilometres offshore between nestings.
- 03
It lays about a hundred eggs at a time, twice a season.
— What sets it apart
On a few beaches in Mexico, Costa Rica and India the arribada takes place: over three or four nights hundreds of thousands of females come ashore together, so densely that they dig each other up and destroy the eggs the previous ones have just laid. It looks like waste and it is a strategy: no predator can eat that much in so little time, and the number of hatchlings that get away is enormous anyway. Outside the arribada nights, a single female on that same beach would have no chance.
